Whitechapel

“I feel like, whether it is musically or lyrically, we just try to put more intelligence into what we do,” says Alex Wade, guitarist for Tennessean deathcore outfit Whitechapel. “There are a lot of bands out there who are like ‘fuck this, fuck that.’ But with us, we are not just focusing on how chuggy and how heavy we can make it.”

Our Endless War picks up where the band’s self-titled fourth album left off, keeping the heavy riffs, fast drumming, tremolo picking and growled vocals, but diverging to explore an even darker realm by tinkering with different tunings.

“As we are getting older, our music and our sound are maturing, too. We’re focusing on making our music more serious,” Wade says about the album’s darker sound. “Back in the day, we were just kids trying to be heavy and brutal. But now we can really care less about how brutal we sound. We’re focused on writing good metal.”

This perspective rings throughout the album with the band exploring different genres with punk-infused syncopated vocals, Arabic influences and the melodic grooves of popular music.

Our Endless War is still very much a Whitechapel album with deathcore at its crux, but this time, some of the band’s fastest songs sit alongside some of its slowest, making for what Wade describes as the band’s darkest album yet.

“‘Let Me Burn’ is a song that Phil [Bozeman] and I put together,” he explains. “It’s really different from what we have done. It’s definitely a lot darker than other songs. It’s slower. It’s groovier. I like to tell people that it’s our radio song in terms of the song’s structure. It has that real radio kind of groove to it.”

But the band’s fanbase can rest assured that Whitechapel has not adopted jovial themes in their lyrics.

“It wouldn’t sound right if we were chugging along and Phil [Bozeman] was writing lyrics about Jesus and puppies.”